If we take the mantra: "Create something that people want and want to pay for" what would be the application you would create if there were no competitors?
As far as I am concerned it would be the Office suite. People at every company want to edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and companies can pay for such software. Companies buy (hundreds of?) millions of MS Office licenses. For me Microsoft = MS Office. Microsoft will remain a huge and profitable company until no one can really compete with MS Office. Most of the things the tech media speaks about is irrelevant in this respect. People will not want to edit documents on smart phones and touch-screens. It is really not sure that people want to edit their documents using an Ajax app and want to host all of their documents remotely at Google.
I would say that other big companies seem to have bad strategies: If they wanted to kill Microsoft they would just have to compete with MS Office directly. The problem what MS Office solves is an essential one. It is incredible that Microsoft has almost monopoly at such an important market.
> As far as I am concerned it would be the Office suite.
I would create Google Documents with forms and workflow automation. I'd pay less attention to formatting and emphasize semantics as the exchange of documents would be purely electronic and they would never hit paper. I would also emphasize collaboration and virtual meeting rooms with shared white boards, possibly with added voice chat and, bandwidth allowing, video.
Yes, it is amazing what they achieved with MS Office. Yet, there are plenty of companies who actually are trying an Office-free life as the licences are actually quite expensive. Compatibility between various Office programs (alternatives) has increased and for basic stuff Google Docs works actually nicely.
I found the relationship between MS Office and MS Windows the most interesting. How strong will MS Office be, without Windows. Office is the Killer app that Windows has. But a lot of people are steering away from Windows.
This is not going to happen overnight, but it might happen sooner or later.
Also - plenty of companies are still working with Office 2003 (or even 2000). The cost op upgrading is pretty significant, so companies wait longer and longer for that. That is very bad for innovation (as you keep being stuck with older software) but good for the companies wallets.
Editing of documents (albeit simple editing) is something people want on their iPads (and to some extend on other smaller devices too). Do not agree with you there.
> Office is the Killer app that Windows has. But a lot of people are steering away from Windows.
Really? Do you think next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop? Or that desktop Mac sales will suddenly jump by orders of magnitude?
> The cost op upgrading is pretty significant, so companies wait longer and longer for that.
I'm not sure it's a cost issue as much as a value for money issue. Companies used to pay a fortune to upgrade to new versions of MS Office, but aside from changing the UI around, to mixed reviews, what major innovation has there really been since the early 2000s to justify the upgrade fees now?
There are plenty of pain points in MS Office where, for example, the usability could be significantly better or some potentially useful functionality is still missing. However, since alternatives such as OpenOffice or Google Docs tend to lag so far behind on these counts anyway, there hasn't been much incentive for MS to improve their product, and the stagnation you alluded to is the result.
> Editing of documents (albeit simple editing) is something people want on their iPads (and to some extend on other smaller devices too).
Sorry, I don't buy it. If I'm in a meeting with a bunch of other guys and we're working through something, it's painful enough watching the guys taking the notes when they are writing them up on a laptop/netbook with a real keyboard, connected up to the projector/TV on the wall. I can only imagine how tedious it would be if they had to fix all the typos and navigate around their document using only a touchscreen.
Good one :) - In that light, do you think the Office for the Mac division has a strategy for Office for iOS (but is just not allowed or funded to develop that product)?
I think iOS is a really tough problem for them - porting Mac Office to iOS would be a huge undertaking and, when finished, would be going up against Apple's iWork apps.
Apple's apps have massive advantages from being produced and sold by the hardware/software/store vendor (can't say I have a lot of sympathy for Microsoft's plight on this particular point!), a narrower feature focus (which is in many ways more desirable on touch platforms), and the mostly-impeccable Apple taste that Microsoft isn't known for.
In my opinion, though, the most difficult hurdle to overcome is that Apple sells the iWork apps for $9.99 a la carte. I can't imagine Microsoft selling Word/Excel/PowerPoint a la carte for even twice that price; they'd be reaping far lower margins than they're used to getting for Office. And I don't think they can do a heavily stripped-down version, either: it'd still take a ton of work and would be even more directly going up against iWork. What's the point?
But if I were the head of the Mac Business Unit, I wouldn't want to tell Ballmer that we have no plans whatsoever and are just going to cede what's been one of our very most profitable markets on what appears to be one of the most important platforms going forward.
And, of course, they're about to run into a somewhat similar issue with the Mac App Store: Mac iWork apps appear to be going a la carte with on-demand instant gratification on what I expect will be the primary channel for users to get Mac apps within a couple of years. Will be interesting to see Microsoft's response on that one, too... Mac Office has been a big cash cow for them.
That's the thing, though...on a mobile device (even as big as the iPad), who can use all the bells and whistles? This isn't supposed to be a huge effort.
Take PowerPoint, for example. It would be a step forward to be able to view any presentation file, but only edit certain things (like adding or editing titles and bullets). And have something like a template importer so that new presentations aren't completely plain. This would be worth downloading for a few bucks, and it wouldn't have 99% of the features of the original. Microsoft has to look beyond the, er, list of bullet points enumerating features, and focus on what's actually needed.
What could they do, though? Make PowerPoint Viewer (with a few editing features) and sell it for, what, $2.99? That seems like a tough sell against $9.99 Keynote, though it could have some limited success. Still really not where I want to be on this platform if I'm used to dominating the office suite market with huge profits.
Sameas the author, I was pretty shocked to find out MS Office Live (the Office web app) doesn't work on iPad, when Google Docs obviously does.
MS's corporate customers have iPads, and Blackberry devices, and whatever else. They can and will want access to their documents remotely, via real mobile web apps rather than RDP style kludges that don't work on small displays. And Microsoft does nothing to support these guys?
So what mobile platform does MS Office Live work on then? Only on Windows Phone (or Windows Mobile)?
Are they making these things web-standard browsers incompatible on purpose? Or do they really only know/want to develop for IE browsers, ActiveX or Silverlight or .Net technology based stuff?
Is there anyone from Microsoft out there who can explain??
Someone else reacted that Office Live does work on the iPad (I never tested it).
Anyhow - as web apps are not what ticks (at the moment) on the mobile devices (Apps are) - I was referring to an actual App version of Office.
> Anyhow - as web apps are not what ticks (at the moment) on the mobile devices (Apps are) - I was referring to an actual App version of Office.
Given the numerous reported problems that small-scale developers have had with App Store policies, up to and including pulling their software product from the store completely, I wouldn't want to invest time and money in building even a simple iWhatever app. Why on earth would Microsoft spend a fortune building a highly complex app when its availability would be at the mercy of a direct competitor?
Someone should really send a copy of that Ballmer "Developers! Developers! Developers!" presentation to the guys at Apple. They aren't the only guys in town with funky devices any more, and despite all the hype, they are not some sort of unassailable market leader either. If businesses find it too hard to develop and sell software on Apple kit, whether it's because of the danger of rejection from App Store, or not having Flash support, or whatever is going on with Java, or something else tomorrow, then platforms with better developer relations are going to pull ahead, and this is a fast-moving industry.
It is not just Apple iOS devices that I am talking about. I am also not advocating Apple's policies or even technologies.
Microsoft has a history of always developing for their own (just as well complicating) platform, so does Apple. From both perspectives I would say: why not make something (good) available to as many users as possible.
Apple built in Exchange support in Mac OS X (and iOS). That is a product from their direct competitor...
I am a linux fan. But I must admit that C#/.net/VS is one of the best development platforms available. Besides that they have just released F# with VS2010 which is kind of 'Language for Geeks' in MS world.
VS is (and has been since I know it) a great technical achievement. It more or less takes the pain out of Windows development. However, it's very Windows-centric (hardly unexpected) and Windows is really not relevant in my current work - mostly Python/Django on Linux on a mostly PHP/Java shop. I don't do C# nor deploy against .NET and it would take a lot of convincing before being allowed to deploy a Windows server in our farm. Even a deployment on Mono would have to be justified, since there isn't much difference, application-wise, between a Mono stack and a Java one.
I regard NetBeans as a very capable IDE. Consider that VS has, probably, lots of hand-tuned x86 assembly in its guts while NetBeans is nice and portable Java. You could probably run it on an Azul box.
I know. It's an excuse for a perceived lower performance, but it's better to progress slowly in the right direction than to rush at warp speed into the vendor lock-in you seem to have escaped ;-)
I like the Netbeans user experience, but at times I do wish it was a native app. The 'swinginess' of it can make it a bit of an eyesore.
IIRC, Netbeans was the first editor on the Mac that I found where I could just select and hit tab to indent the selection block without having to change any settings. All the other Mac apps I tried would just replace the text with a tab. Coming off of Windows text editors, it was a huge nuisance to me.
Yes, I agree - VS is a nice development platform. But it is mainly designed to develop for the Microsoft platform. (though even that is changing a lot bit and they are going more the "Eclipse IDE" path now.
I haven't kept up with VS since it also doesn't apply to my target platform, when you say that is changing do you mean it /has/ changed in the latest version, or that it will be changing soon?
Microsoft is making a ton off of Xbox Live subscriptions. So much that it has made their entire entertainment division profitable (even though they lost money on xbox and xbox360 hardware sales).
Let's not forget that Microsoft was the first to build the modern comprehensive online console gaming experience. In addition to being a big revenue stream, monthly subscriptions also have the advantage of being very sticky: there are no sudden movements in this stream of revenue, but gradual trends.
@metamemetics - I agree. With the Xbox - though seemingly unprofitable for years (in the beginning) - Microsoft has deployed a successful strategy (or at least the product turned successful). I decided to not venture into that area of MS business (and have left many other sides of their business undiscussed as well).
Even in the entertainment area though - casual gaming and handheld gaming (two very important businesses) have been largely left untouched by MS.
I also agree. The XBOX and newest generation of Zune/Windows Phone 7 are probably the most innovative things to be -released- (Courier is therefore discounted) from Microsoft in quite some time. You can also argue that they are the Microsoft platforms with the best user experiences. Even MS haters are hard pressed to say that they outright suck.
Where MS has stumbled, in my minds and of my colleagues' minds, is the dumbing down of Windows and Office products. In terms of usability, Windows XP and Office 2003 were a good balance of function and learning curve.
I'm of the view that Windows and Office have been around long enough to be quite pervasive, at least in the first world. With such high PC penetration in the marketplace, excessive tweaking to the Office and Windows GUI to make it more palatable to non-computer users was probably unnecessary effort, but I'll also concede that the new chrome probably sold a lot of upgrades.
They might have a good chance of breaking through to handheld gaming with windows phone 7. I would wager a bet that XNA is the only thing that gives it any chance of surviving.
Now would be a great time to spin off the entertainment division to let it grow without undue interference and focus on being a good, boring, corporate-centric company.
Its high time Microsoft opened up IE for Linux, Mac and developers. This step alone could get a bit of attention back to Microsoft in app arena.
Microsoft is such a big name that people tend to try out it's product just out of curiosity, with the expectation that something might turn out to be good; given all the money and talent MS has. The company just needs to launch things at a faster pace.
Why did they actually discontinue IE for the Mac (years ago) or did they never release IE for Linux. One of the reasons IE is losing market share (relatively) must be that people who are coming from other platforms, tend to stick with the browser they like.
IE 4 was great at the time (and won the browser war with Netscape).
I do not understand why they (MS) seem so fearful of embracing the open standards/multiple platform approach.
It's never too late if you have a mammoth no users already in one or other form (OS, Windows phone et al.). If MS still opens up the browser and start giving some goodie bags to the developers, something similar to other app stores, we might see some share of the pie going to MS.
They're already fighting an uphill battle against Linux in the server market. They're probably concerned about what lending credibility to it on the desktop could do.
I don't think thats going to happen soon. Adopting open source is probably a matter of pride for MS, else they would have already included Python/Perl in Windows
As far as I am concerned it would be the Office suite. People at every company want to edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and companies can pay for such software. Companies buy (hundreds of?) millions of MS Office licenses. For me Microsoft = MS Office. Microsoft will remain a huge and profitable company until no one can really compete with MS Office. Most of the things the tech media speaks about is irrelevant in this respect. People will not want to edit documents on smart phones and touch-screens. It is really not sure that people want to edit their documents using an Ajax app and want to host all of their documents remotely at Google.
I would say that other big companies seem to have bad strategies: If they wanted to kill Microsoft they would just have to compete with MS Office directly. The problem what MS Office solves is an essential one. It is incredible that Microsoft has almost monopoly at such an important market.